Monthly Archives: July 2018

You might ask me why I have read just about every one of Sam Marquis’ books, but don’t bother. I’m going to give you reasons why as I go along. As a former history teacher and continued historian and lover of history, perhaps those last two are one and the same, and having been known as a World, read European, History specialist, you would think I would know the finer details of something with such significance to the world as WWII. But, unfortunately all the nice money I paid for a top of the line college education failed me yet again. And I know this only because of that evil man writer known as Samuel Marquis.

Of all the books Marquis has written, his WWII trilogyis by far my favorite, only because of my love of history. I am biased that way. I love his other books too but again, I am biased. What sets his books apart from other historical fiction efforts is his deep research and attention to detail. He doesn’t just use information that is easy to find, he uses information that has been declassified by governments. That means he dredges through file after file and reads obscure books with information in it that would bore a bookaholic, all in the effort to find three characters little known by anyone outside of their families and immediate hierarchy during WWII.

Eddie Chapman-Agent Zigzag

Spies of the Midnight Sun: A True Story of WWII Heroes is about real people. We have the colorful British safecracker, Eddie Chapman, who is the double agent known as Agent Zigzag. Then there are two amazing female Norwegian Resistance fighters, the 20-year-old model Dagmar Lahlum, who is Chapman’s lover, and Annemarie Breien. Of course, if there are heroes and good guys then there are the evil bad guy and of course Nazis cover that role well, and in this case, it is the Gestapo’s investigator Siegfried Fehmer.

Dagmar Lahlum

Several reviewers have commented that this book should be a film and I agree. You have it all. Spies, the Resistance, Nazis, surprises, twists and turns, and moments of complete shock. And you can’t forget the must of great characters.

So why do I like Marquis’ books and recommend them to everyone? He isn’t just writing fluff about a favorite subject, which he could and get away with it because his writing is that good, he loves his subject deeply and it shows in the quality you get with each chapter. With Spies of the Midnight Sun, the final in his WWII trilogy, he chooses to spotlight the women who made victory possible. I don’t believe that fact has been shouted enough. He is bringing to light how important women were, the chances they took, the willingness to die, or perhaps experience worse, for their country’s freedom.

Annemarie Breien

I only hope Sam Marquis has more historical fiction left in him. How he has put out this much in-depth content so rapidly and not slackened in his quality or even quantity of words for that matter, is beyond me. I’ve written historical fiction and afterwards I was so burnt out that I needed a serious break, but Marquis seems to have an IV of Red Bull permanently inserted in his veins.

Get this book! You don’t need to have read the other books in the trilogy. They are standalones. Once you read this one, you will WANT those others, especially Altar of Resistance, which includes declassified information about the Vatican and Pope’s roles during WWII. You will be surprised. Go to AmazonNOW before you forget to later!

As Steven Pinker(cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author) states in the foreword, “this is a book about a whole new way of studying the mind” and, I would add, human behaviour.

This book is less about big data science than about the new innovative ways of thinking, of designing, and of approaching the questions we ask of our life.

Stephens-Davidowitz makes his points by regaling the reader with early Big Data collected through Google searches and clicks, predominantly. Facebook also features as with other Silicon Valley data companies. “everybody lies” gives new and interesting insights into matters such as the effect of assassination of leader on a country’s economy, or going to a great university equates to a better career or larger paycheck.

Stephens-Davidowitz provides a definition of “data” which is no longer limited to numbers or words. For a data scientist such as he, Big Data has four virtues. First, Big Data as “digital truth serum” as people are most honest without an apparent audience leading to honest data on say, sexual preferences or racial discrimination. It provide honest data. Second, it offers a way to run large-scale randomized controlled experiment through the click of the mouse. Third, Big Data allows us, through the large scale sample, to zoom in on subsets of people and with greater accuracy. Fourth, Big Data provides new types of data.

What’s logical and rational before is no longer enough nor are the experiment results accurate enough. The scope of our sample size has significantly increased withe the internet, so why think small?

That is not to say, as Stephens-Davidowitz points out, that Big Data is the answer but it is a valuable resource which we are ill-advised to ignore. Information is king or queen, and this is truer than before. Social science is becoming real science, Stephens-Davidowitz says. Why? Read the book.

Stephens-Davidowitz encourages us to approach this field with curiosity and creativity when contemplating how we use and manage data. Data however is neither good or evil; it is powerful. In “everybody lies”, he cautions against what Big Data cannot do and what we shouldn’t do with Big Data.

The Typist by Caroline Taylor? Let me start out by saying that at 250 pages you’ll be able to read this one in one sitting if you choose to but actually because you can’t help it.

Set in 1960s Washington, D.C. the atmosphere is perfect. If you lived there during that time you would swear you were right back there again as you turn the pages. Taylor nailed it.

Judah Lundquist moves to DC to make a better life for herself after growing up having been used in schemes by her father and conflicting being bible thumped by her mother. That had to be confusing, but she finds the courage to move on and she ends up right in the middle of the deep end of secrets at an insurance company. Yes, an insurance company. Think about the 1960s and how easy it would be to do things less than the straight and narrow.

But the intelligent young woman doesn’t back down as the stories moves on although she is a bit naïve about certain things, it still doesn’t stop her.

You get twists and surprises by the end. The only thing I can say against the book is that it that is a bit slow to begin with, which I have found to be common in books lately. I think we as a society are just used to things being crammed into an hour or two hour filmed piece that we forget that books just like this one are behind what we see on screen, just cut up and pieced together. So keep reading and you’ll get in to a groove and finish before you know it.

Who is Caroline Taylor?

Formerly from Washington, D.C., Caroline Taylor is an award-winning writer and editor living in North Carolina. She has written two mysteries—What Are Friends For? (Five Star-Cengage, 2011) and Jewelry from a Grave (Five Star-Cengage, 2013)—and is the author of Publishing the Nonprofit Annual Report: Tips, Traps, and Tricks of the Trade (Jossey-Bass, 2001). Her short stories and essays have appeared in several online and print magazines. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Visit her at http://www.carolinestories.com

British Spymaster Tar Robertson and Double Cross were Instrumental in Winning D-Day

By Samuel Marquis

In Spies of the Midnight Sun: A True Story of WWII Heroes, Book 3 of his WWII Series, Historical Fiction Author Samuel Marquis brings to life legendary British MI5 Spymaster Tar Robertson and the Double Cross Spy System, which played a pivotal role in the Allied deception at Normandy on D-Day and other operations in Hitler’s Festung Europa.

It has become an annual ritual for Americans and British to celebrate the hoodwinking of Hitler and the triumph of democracy over tyranny represented by D-Day. We all know how important it was, the tremendous stakes involved, and the glamorous Allied players in the daring assault upon Hitler’s Festung Europa recreated in countless books and movies. We all know that June 6-9, 1944, comprised the most epic battle of WWII. The only problem is it’s not true. The D-Day deception operation and subsequent acquisition of the beaches of Normandy was, in the words of Ben Macintyre in his book Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, “an undisputed, unalloyed, world-changing triumph”—but it was not the greatest battle of WWII. That distinction belongs to Stalingrad or Kursk. But the bloodbath of the Eastern Front—with war crimes committed by Hitler’s Germans and Stalin’s Russians in equal measure—doesn’t resonate with the historical poignancy of D-Day. And D-Day is still the greatest amphibious operation in the history of warfare.

With that in mind, the key to the success of that longest day was the Double Cross Spy System and Operation Fortitude, the latter of which was designed to persuade the Germans that the invasion of France would not take place in Normandy but in Pas de Calais. The Double Cross Spy System, or XX System, was a counterespionage and deception operation of the British Security Service, a civilian organization usually referred to by its cover title MI5. The system is described in detail in Books 1 and 3 of my World War Two Series, my countdown-to-D-Day thriller Bodyguard of Deception and the newly released Spies of theMidnight Sun: A True Story of WWII Heroes that takes place mostly in Occupied Norway. Under Double Cross, German agents in Britain – real and false – were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves, and were then used by the British to broadcast mainly disinformation to their Nazi controllers. The deception operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee under the leadership of Thomas Argyll “Tar” Robertson and John Cecil Masterman; the name of the committee comes from the number 20 in Roman numerals: “XX” (i.e. a double cross).

Tar Robertson was the brains behind Double Cross. He wore a Glengarry cap and McKenzie tartan trews of the Seaforth Highlanders, and was universally well-liked by those who knew and worked with him. He played a pivotal role not only in the main Normandy deception, Operation Fortitude, but in Operation Mincemeat, a deception intended to cover the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily by fooling the Germans into thinking that an invasion of Greece was imminent. His deft handling of a widely disparate collection of Double Cross agents—among them socialites, sex-addicts, criminals, and drunks—brought several spectacular military advantages to the Allied cause between 1942 and 1945.

Robertson—working with his multifaceted team of double agents and his MI5 colleague Masterman, the somewhat priggish, cricket-obsessed Oxford don— was the driving force in the various Double Cross deception operations that played an important role in the ultimate Allied victory (though not as much as the Big Red Army pounding away along the Eastern Front, remember). The most important by far was Operation Fortitude, which had the overall effect of immobilizing the Wehrmacht tank reserves and limiting the effectiveness of German counter attacks all along the Normandy coastline.

While the incessant rivalries among and within the Wehrmacht, Abwehr, SS, the Führer’s headquarters, and the various other bureaucracies clogging German decision-making played a huge role in the German failure and Allied triumph, the Fortitude deception drove the Reich to an even higher state of confusion at a critical time—with disastrous results for a vacillating Hitler and Nazi Germany. And it was all brought about by a thirty-one-year-old Scotsman named Thomas Argyll Robertson, who early on in the war decided to enlist captured Nazi operatives as double agents rather than hanging them from the gallows.

It was a brilliant and uplifting idea for a country under siege in the air by Nazi Germany during the Battle for Britain, and there is no doubt that Robertson was the right man for the job. By all accounts, he was affable, determined, discreet, and doggedly loyal—but he could also be ruthless in his handling of those who threatened Double Cross. With a fondness and appreciation for a good practical joke, he also liked to pick the names of his turned double agents and tended to give them colorful monikers that he and his staff would not fail to remember. Two of his favorite and most successful doubles were the convicted safecracker Eddie Chapman (code-named Agent Zigzag by Robertson because of his unpredictability) and the Yugoslavian playboy Dusko Popov (code-named Tricycle Robertson because he enjoyed ménage à trois sex).

Tar Robertson was widely recognized by many of his contemporaries as one of MI5’s greatest assets, but is little known today. So, this June 6—during the 74rd anniversary of D-Day—is a good time to pay homage to a legendary British spymaster who helped the Allies win the war. He was truly a great one—and he had a sense of humor to boot.

Get Spies of the Midnight Sun: A True Story of WWII Heroes at Amazon.com by clicking HERE.

Biography

The ninth great-grandson of legendary privateer Captain William Kidd, Samuel Marquis is the bestselling, award-winning author of a World War Two Series, the Nick Lassiter-Skyler International Espionage Series, and historical pirate fiction. His novels have been #1 Denver Post bestsellers, received multiple national book awards (Foreword Reviews Book of the Year, American Book Fest Best Book, USA Best Book, Beverly Hills, Next Generation Indie, Colorado Book Awards), and garnered glowing reviews from #1 bestseller James Patterson, Kirkus, and Foreword Reviews (5 Stars). Book reviewers have compared Marquis’s WWII thrillers Bodyguard of Deception and Altar of Resistance to the epic historical novels of Tom Clancy, John le Carré, Ken Follett, Herman Wouk, Daniel Silva, and Alan Furst. Mr. Marquis’s newest historical novel, Spies of the Midnight Sun, is the true story of legendary British safecracker and spy Eddie Chapman, the British Double Cross Spy System, and courageous Norwegian female Resistance operatives Dagmar Lahlum and Annemarie Breien. His website is samuelmarquisbooks.com and for publicity inquiries, please contact JKSCommunications at info@jkscommunications.com.